


Same Side, Different Coin

by alexattherockshow



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Kinda, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, Reincarnation, Tatooine Slave Culture, and the ships, just go along with it, look i know it's obvious where I'm going with this, other tags to be added as the story progresses, rating may change as story progresses, you just have to look at the first tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2018-09-12 11:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9070600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexattherockshow/pseuds/alexattherockshow
Summary: Anakin Skywalker is born. But he remembers early on that he was once Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. How will these memories and the knowledge that comes with them affect his choices and circumstances?





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Well hello there. I have made bold claims in the past that I would begin writing and it never happened. But I was in the shower this morning thinking about a fic where Anakin Skywalker is reborn as Harry Potter (it's great so far http://archiveofourown.org/works/8624473/chapters/19776076) and I started thinking about what the reverse would look like and boom! two hours later and I have this prologue. So um. Be kind?

Light.

Sound.

Unfocused images and difficulty concentrating.

Confusion…disorientation…a sense of wrongness. Otherness.

Where was this? It felt… unexpected, unclear, not right, not right, NOT RIGHT.

Helplessness, confusion.

Thoughts that wouldn’t focus, memories that couldn’t connect, a sense of being cut off from something vital.

Fear.

Then, a face. Smiling, tired, kind.

This face was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen… had he ever seen anything before?

It didn’t matter. This first look at this first face and fear fled. Closing his eyes, the newborn Anakin Skywalker surrendered to sleep in an exhausted Shmi’s embrace.

 

Anakin learned to recognize his name much sooner than expected. His favorite face frowned in confusion at first when her child’s eyes became more focused than any infant, more aware. This look of consternation lasted until the day in which Anakin, confined in his small cot while his mother worked across the room, summoned to himself the small piece of machinery Shmi held in her hands, thus demanding a shift in attention to himself. As Anakin had his prize taken from him, understanding seemed to dawn on Shmi’s face, as though an all-encompassing answer had been given her all at once.

For his part, Anakin gradually became aware of his own accelerated cognitive development. The only reason he could understand that this was happening was because along with this increased cognition came flashes of images and knowledge, half-formed memories and incongruities.

Perception and expectation were the first things to solidify. When she wasn’t working, Shmi would shower Anakin with affection and comfort, freely given as only a mother can. It was received with all the joy of a child, but with confusion as well. A part of Anakin that he was only yet beginning to perceive expected this love to come from the direction of a delicate looking face, belied by intense green eyes and fiery hair, alternated by another face, with eyes outlined in solid circles and shorter black hair. Instead, it came from a mild desert-rough face outlined with simple brown hair. Another, clearer part of Anakin felt unaccountably disconcerted at receiving motherly affection at all, half expecting to receive a constant stream of indifference and disapproval.

About a year after his birth, memories began flowing, though they came at first only in images, emotions, and half-remembered sensations. Anakin couldn’t yet assimilate them as the memories they were, becoming instead confused and disoriented, worrying Shmi terribly.

Weeks before his second birthday, Anakin dreamt. Only a very small part of him felt like the very small desert child in this dream. He was Anakin Skywalker, but he was also someone else.

 

“Master.”

He whirled around, facing the speaker.

The creature he now faced was visible only as a cloaked figure in black, standing tall and imposing, exuding an air of finality. Two things were absolutely clear in that moment. The first was that anyone would cower in instinctual fear before this being, filled with an inescapable need to hide. The second was that he himself felt neither one of those things. Instead he felt…. familiarity.

“Death.” He spoke, and in that moment, understanding finally came, though incomplete. Harry Potter, Master of Death, the Chosen One of his age, stood before the personification of Death, and he had no fear.

“I remember dying… I let Tom kill me so he’d become mortal.” He touched his forehead, looking around in contemplation. “Is it gone? Is the horcrux gone? What happened? Dumbledore said…” He paused. “I chose to go… On.” He looked up sharply into the shadowed visage. “Was he defeated? Did we win?”

“So many questions, master.” Responded Death. His voice should have been frightening, but it too was simply familiar, though Harry had never actually heard it. “Yes, the horcrux is gone, yes, your friends were successful in destroying the remaining fragments of Voldemort’s soul. As for the other thing… Dumbledore always did have a way with wordplay, did he not? Not even meeting me could stop him being cryptic. Allow me to quote him now, then. ‘Death is but the next great adventure.’ Flattering, though again, cryptic.”

“I’m not dead now though. I’m… someone else. Anakin. My name is Anakin Skywalker. I never heard anyone in the magical world talk about reincarnation.” He laughed ruefully. “I’m not even two years old now. Is this my great adventure?” He paused again before asking, “Does everyone reincarnate?”

Death scoffed. “Of course not, master. What would be the point of me then? I send most everyone ‘On,’ as you so eloquently put it. But I am also the one with the ability to make… exceptions. It might interest you to know though that Riddle’s soul was so decimated beyond repair that I did neither. It just… ceased to exist after it was wiped out.”

“Fascinating,” Harry deadpanned. “So you made an exception then? It is because I mastered the Hallows? Did that literally make me your master then?”

“Yes to the las two questions, kind of to the first.” Death replied, as he leaned against a previously non-existing wall in a show of more nonchalance than one would expect from such a being. “If you’ll recall, you were given a choice.”

“Yes, we’ve been over this, I chose to go ‘On’” retorted Harry, making quotation marks with his fingers to make his exasperation clearer. “I loved everyone I left behind dearly but there were so many losses, so much pain, so many years of fighting. I couldn’t go back and force the ones that were left to watch me live out a mimicry of a normal life. Not when I was raised as a lamb to the slaughter in that world. Not when I could never be more for them than the broken Chosen One. Not after everything.”

Tears were coming down Harry’s face now. Tears from pain at leaving those he loved behind, tears from shame for not being strong enough to go back to that life when he had already embraced his own death.

He gave a humorless laugh. “I guess I should’ve read the fine print.” He looked up reproachingly at his companion.

“I may have broadened the definition of going On for you. But your soul, Harry Potter, your soul, _Anakin Skywalker_ , had so much potential, it shone so brightly, and it was stymied for the whole of your first life by that soul leech you were constantly fighting off. Now I wouldn’t usually concern myself over matters such as these, but you mastered my Hallows and I am thereby compelled to be… invested in you. I cannot guarantee that this life will be easy, but it will be your next adventure, and yes, it can be great also. You can make it so.”

The dream was beginning to fade as consciousness encroached, but Harry… no. But Anakin still had questions. “Wait!” He pleaded. “I have more questions!”

Death chuckled. “Do not worry yourself, master, I’ll come to you if I’m ever truly needed. But I can’t reveal everything to you now. What would be the fun in that? Spoilers are so last reality.”

With those words resonating in his small ears, the toddler named Anakin Skywalker opened his eyes to wakefulness with seventeen new years of memories solidified in his mind.


	2. Tremor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anakin has a series of realizations about his new life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so I know it's been a month and a half since I posted the first chapter but this is the first thing I've ever written that I didn't HAVE to write. I didn't expect procrastination to hit hard, and without a deadline... well, you get the gist. Oh God, I've become that person who frustrates me with long waits between updates. I get it now.  
> I can't make any promises other than the fact that I have no intention of abandoning this, so that's something. Also, I have no beta, and so far for each of the two chapters, I've written it all in one continuous go and then copy pasted it here immediately so proofreading kinda happens after the initial posting. Cause it's annoying to do for your own writing, apparently.  
> Anywho, I do have a Tumblr, if you're into that. I make no promises about that either: http://oceanofbuckyfeels.tumblr.com/

The day that Anakin Skywalker realized he was a slave was remembered by all the inhabitants of Tatooine. Of course, they didn’t remember it as such, they remembered it as the day of the first earthquake to shake the planet - and shake all of it - in living memory.

Anakin had just turned three, and his life since his vision had been a study in acting and impatience. An adventure it may still become, but he figured he had to get through his childhood first. 

Now more self-aware, he had embraced the novel experience of having a loving mother past the age of one this time around, though he wondered why she was alone. He loved her immensely, with all the childlike devotion he would have loved to be able to give in his life as Harry. For her sake, he settled into normal childlike patterns, into behavior that would worry Shmi less. Since he did still have to train his brain and mouth to connect in order to grow his rudimentary speaking skils, as well as his limbs to have some semblance of coordination, he had a normal progression in this area. Well, normal for a very determined, intelligent child. 

Shmi would pick him up from his crib early in the morning, carry him to what appeared to be a communal dwelling for senior members of their shanty community, and lay him back down to finish resting in floor mats with other children while she went off to work. Presumably. Anakin would spend the whole day putting up with the other children until Shmi picked him back up late in the afternoon and took him back home. It was the life of a poor working mother, but Anakin was content in sharing it with someone who adored him so much. He’d do well by her when his body got older. 

The past year had brought with it a number of startling realizations, of which two stood out most starkly. The first had happened when he had first tried to reach for his magical core in a vague plan to begin strengthening it. He couldn’t find it. That intrinsic part of him that was as a flame all his first life, burning and beating and growing when he fed it, could not be felt by him any longer. 

The grief had threatened to consume him, but before he would allow it to, he tried to reason with himself that he hadn’t even been aware of this flame inside him until the first moment he did magic intentionally, and he was still so young that it may be little more than a candle flame now, not yet fed enough to grow.

He had calmed himself down as best he could, having felt on the edge of a panic attack, and tried to bring his heart rate down by using the meditation techniques that Hermione had once gone and on about after falling in one of her research spirals. 

Once he had felt collected enough, he reached back inside himself to look for the flame of his magic. It wasn’t there but… the place where he expected to feel it wasn’t empty either. In the place of the bonfire he had felt at 17, was a massive, rolling waterfall, just as powerful as his fully grown core, but different in its nature and shining rather than burning. As if the amount of water within it determined how much sunlight it reflected. It was the best way he could conceptualize it. 

The second massive revelation was that he wasn’t on Earth. He was on an entirely different planet, and from what little he could gather from snatches of conversations Shmi had with vendors and neighbors, it was only one of many that were known and traveled to by many. Which meant that by his standards, the non-human creatures he lived amongst weren’t magical creatures at all. By his former standards… they were aliens. 

These things and more, Anakin took in stride. He meditated and flexed this new type of power to be better able to feel it and use it. In some ways, it was similar to accidental magic, in that he could move objects with his will, only in a more steadfast and controlled manner, intentional and focused. And yet, it was also different in that he didn’t move the objects because he cast at them with his power, but because he reached for them, and felt them in his power’s grasp. It was fascinating. Hermione would have a conniption trying to figure it all out. He couldn’t wait to see what else he uncovered.

Likewise, his daily routine was something he didn’t worry himself about. Until the day it changed. 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

When he turned three, his mom began taking him to work with her. He wasn’t sure why, he didn’t see why he couldn’t just continue to spend the days in his make-shift daycare. But he went along with it, as he had done with everything so far. He’d follow Shmi around what he figured out was a junk shop, watching her assess and repair gadgets, robots, and parts. 

Watto, the owner of the shop, would step through now and then to demand updates or assign new work, barely sparing a glance for Anakin, save to tell Shmi to teach him everything she did. While a seemingly odd request, Anakin didn’t mind. He soon figured out that he had a knack for machines. It was wonderful. He could reach out with his senses and understand how something worked or what it needed in order to begin working. And it was fascinating. 

He wondered if he would have ever had a similar skill in his past life, but if so, he’d never really had a chance to find out. The wizarding world wasn’t big on technology or machines. 

But one day, Watto was in a foul mood. Anakin had overheard him losing a customer to another junk dealer, right after being informed of having lost some sort of bet he had a lot of money on. He stormed into the back lot where Shmi was working, clearly wanting to blow some steam by shouting at his captive audience. Anakin mostly tuned him out until the very end, when he had, for the second time in this short life, a life-changing revelation. “….and make sure you NEVER fall so far behind in your duties again, or I’ll sell you to the first bidder and train up your kid to replace you!” Watto was saying. “I’m sure you wouldn’t like belonging to a Hutt again!” With that, he stormed out. 

Shmi looked down at Anakin with tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Ani,” she wept. “I wish I could have brought you into a better life than one of a slave.” She walked back in through the shop’s back door, leaving a stunned Anakin behind her. As realization settled in, Anakin’s first ridiculous thought was of house elves and rolling his eyes at S.P.E.W. 

And then the outrage hit. He fell on the ground, overwhelmed when the well deep inside him bubbled up and demanded an outlet for his righteous anger, his indignation, and he let it out into the ground where his hands had landed. He poured it all out before it could drown him, and the ground shook. And then all of the ground on all of Tatooine trembled, enough to startle the people and rattle the objects. It trembled for a seemingly interminable minute and then quieted. Shaking himself, Anakin looked up when it was over, not yet aware that his outrage had been felt on a whole planet. He only spared a thought to be thankful that the earthquake had been minor before blackness overtook him and he fell into unconsciousness.


	3. Mission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, I KNOW, I KNOW, I'M A BAD PERSON, I'M THE SCUM OF THE EARTH, I SHOULD BE MADE TO WALK THE STREETS IN SHAME LIKE CERSEI FOR THIS DELAY. How many months???? I'd be fuming if I were you guys, assuming that any of you are still hoping for an update at this point. I can't promise this won't happen again, but I can promise that I'll feel really bad about it if it does....
> 
> Anyway... I’m fudging with the canonical ages of some characters because it fits my narrative better. Artistic license and all that. Also, research is not my idea of fun so references to canonical events will be limited mostly to movie-based stuff. Basically, this is very hand-wavy in regards to canon, but that’s why it’s fanfiction and not plain fiction, right? I will say, that whether intentionally or not, I may find myself referencing or borrowing from Flamethrower’s Re-Entry universe but that’s because I adore it so much that it’s sometimes more canon in my mind than real canon. Flamethrower is my muse.

**Coruscant**

**2 years later**

Thirteen-year old Obi-Wan Kenobi followed his new master down the halls of the Jedi Temple. He hadn’t yet gotten past the point of sheer eagerness in doing so, not when it still felt like so much of a relief to be a padawan after living in fear of never being chosen. While he and Qui-Gon had been a team for a few months already and gone on several short missions together, the novelty had not worn off. 

They had been called before the council to be briefed on a new assignment, one that they were told had the potential to be longer than the ones they had gone on so far. Obi-Wan hadn’t heard too much about it yet, had only overheard brief mentions about a rebellion. It confused him, what with republic control being what it was in the galaxy, but he was not yet comfortable enough to ask questions as often as he wanted to. 

He was anxious about appearing before the Council again, having not yet outgrown how intimidating he found them. They were all giants in his eyes in one way or another, though particularly Yoda as the Grandmaster of the Order and Mace Windu, as the recently named Head of the Order. So it was with no small amount of trepidation that he crossed the council chamber's threshold, coming to a stop one step behind his master, as was proper. They bowed in unison and waited for their assignment. 

"Master Jinn, Padawan Kenobi, an interesting assignment we have for you," chuckled master Yoda. 

Privately, Obi-Wan doubted it, as the missions he had gone on so far consisted of a lot of standing around while his master tried to mediate between squabbling politicians and the like. Not his idea of interesting. But before he could contemplate this forward, master Windu picked up the briefing, and he didn’t bother beating around the bush.

“We have been contacted by the Hutts in control of an outer rim planet,” he began, and Obi-Wan was momentarily distracted by the sudden surprise he felt from his master through their still-new training bond. It was a rare emotion from him, in Obi-Wan’s limited experience. Though not always calm himself, Qui-Gon Jinn always exuded a sense of calm. 

Shaking himself, Obi-Wan tuned back in to master Windu’s words. “…highly unusual, as their iron-fisted control over the systems they govern have been the main obstacle in integrating them into the Republic. They claim to be willing to begin talks to resolve this if the Jedi order helps them resolve the recent unrest among the populace.”

“What sort of unrest?” Interjected Qui-Gon.

“They claim that a large portion of their lowest class has begun raiding the Hutt’s strongholds and stealing their property.” Mace responded.

“You don’t seem particularly sure of that claim.”

Mace gives the impression of shrugging without actually doing anything so undignified. “They’re Hutts. They’re not a race that values honesty toward outsiders. And these particular Hutts are essentially mobsters with planetary control. Their so far complete control over this system and decidedly unfriendly attitude toward visitors, traders and smugglers excluded, means that we have no way of confirming the validity of their story unless we go there at their request” master Windu explained. 

Qui-Gon nodded in satisfaction. This answer clearly only confirmed the angle he expected the council to take. 

“So is our mission then to inspect the veracity of their claims under the guise of believing them already?”

“Not the Jedi way, deception is,” spoke up Yoda, “their own conclusions as to our presence there, the Hutts will be allowed to make.”

“Yes, master, of course,” answered Qui-Gon dutifully, but the training bond spoke to Obi-Wan again, this time with a feeling of distinct sarcasm, though none was heard in his master’s voice. 

“You will go and meet with the Hutt leadership and glean more information. We are not soldiers and we are not executioners, though their intention may be to use us as one or the other. We are however, the keepers of peace. If this planet does indeed have to potential to join the Republic, peace must be achieved beforehand. That is why you must also find a way to meet with the leadership of these alleged thieves and determine their motivation in this.” Mace summed up. 

“If this has become such a large problem that ruthless Hutts have been unable to put it down, I find it very unlikely that thievery is its only motivating factor” decided Qui-Gon, looking to Mace for confirmation. Mace only nodded in response.

“And what is our mission after we have discovered the truth in all this?” asked Qui-Gon with the tone of one who already knows the answer. 

“The truth IS your mission, master Jinn. Once you have found it, this council will determine the correct path to take.”

Obi-Wan looked up to see his master nod, though from his vantage point one step behind, he glimpse a vein in Qui-Gon’s temple twitching in annoyance.

“Your transport will leave at 0800 hours tomorrow,” spoke Mace with an air of finality. It was a dismissal. 

“And what is this planet that we are going to seek truth in?” asked Qui-Gon as he and Obi-Wan bowed to the council. 

“Tatooine.”


End file.
